Four commits in four days: Wilbekin to join Gators

By Adam Silverstein
April 21, 2010

The Florida Gators basketball team will have a drastically different look in 2010 as head coach Billy Donovan has acquired his fourth commitment in as many days. Florida Today is reporting that Donovan plans to sign three-star point guard Scottie Wilbekin (Gainesville, FL) to a 2010 basketball scholarship.

Though Wilbekin is only a high school junior, he has “excellent” grades and enough credits to graduate early in order to be eligible for admission to the University of Florida as a member of the basketball team’s 2010 recruiting class. Before he can do anything, he must complete standardized testing and receive clearance from the NCAA.

Wilbekin, who is quite familiar with the program, is very much a fall-back option for the Gators after the team failed to land two of the top point guards in the country in Brandon Knight (Fort Lauderdale, FL) and Ray McCallum (Detroit, MI).

They also lost out on three-star point guard Brandon Young (Baltimore, MD), who has decided to uphold his commitment to DePaul and enroll as a freshman.

Potentially the sixth scholarship player brought in for 2010, Wilbekin would join four-star forwards Patric Young (Jacksonville, FL) and Casey Prather (Jackson, TN), three-stars Will Yeguete (Melbourne, FL) and Cody Larson (Sioux Falls, SD) and Rutgers transfer guard Mike Rosario (Jersey City, NJ), who will not be eligible to play until 2011-12.

In order to sign six recruits to scholarships, further changes are likely abound inside the Florida program. Sophomore guard Ray Shipman has already decided to transfer, many believe freshman point guard Rod Tishman may return to Israel, redshirt sophomore forward Adam Allen could retire and junior forward Alex Tyus has submitted his name for evaluation for the 2010 NBA Draft. Florida would need two of either Tishman, Allen or Tyus to leave the program or else it would exceed its allotment of 13 scholarships.

8 Comments

  1. JayV says:

    Awesome.

  2. SaraGator says:

    Billy D is on a roll….

  3. g8ter27 says:

    Well this is exciting but I have to wonder how a highschool junior will may an impact next year…on the bright side he is already a 3 star as a junior.

  4. JaxCharles5 says:

    Gator Country has a great write up on Wilbekin, he’s used to playing against boys bigger, faster, and older than himself. Probably not so much faster now a days though, from the write up it seemed that he would have been rated as at least a 4 star recruit next year. Great job Billy.

  5. Foobar says:

    “Florida would need either Tishman, Allen or Tyus to leave the program or else it would exceed its allotment of 13 scholarships.”

    Note – Florida needs two of those three to leave. They’re returning 9 scholarship players players and bringing in 6. I wonder if Billy Donovan will ask one of the players who is from the state of Florida (and eligible for in-state tuition) to give up their scholarship for one of the newcomers.

  6. Right you are Foobar. Must have forgotten to qualify it when I used the paragraph from the previous story. Thanks for the heads-up!

  7. Foobar says:

    Is Scottie Wilbekin coming a sure thing right now? Does that mean Donovan isn’t recruiting Chris Denson anymore? Or is Wilbekin the back up plan if Denson chooses to go elsewhere?

  8. It’s Wilbekin. As long as he gets a good SAT score and takes the final class he needs – which he will. Click on his name on the bottom portion of the article and check out our newest posts on him.

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